Genesis 3:12
The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.
Blame shifting found its origin and birth when sin was brought into the garden by the actions of Adam and Eve. Actually, it was the man who tried to shift God's attention from his mess up to her mess up. "Hey, God!!! Looky here at what this here woman has done. I told her she better not eat that fruit. Would she listen to me? Noooooo! She did it anyway." Basically what Adam was saying is that Eve disobeyed first, so she should be the focal point of any discipline that God doles out. Funny how love for each other (such as these two fine upstanding individuals that occupied God's garden) seems to go out the window when they were uncovered.
This habit of shifting the blame is alive and will today, especially in the world of addiction. I spent 18+ years at Rapha Treatment Center and if I heard "Me being an addict really isn't my fault"...once, I heard it a million times. Maybe not so much in those words, but fault for the addiction rarely settled at the feet of the one who was addicted. Such is the nature of the beast of sin/addiction.
This is why real recovery requires rigorous honest and transparency on the part of the person seeking help. It requires an admission that they are responsible for the mess they've made...for the destruction that has been brought about because of their using. If a person cannot be honest about themselves and what they have done then they will always seek to cover up, hide, and shift the blame from themselves to others. Sometimes blaming even those who are closest to them, such as family. The very family that is trying to get them help becomes the target of their blame shifting. Kind of sick isn't it? Well, that is the power of sin when it has a place to hide and function within an individual.
God's answer, like I said previously, is honesty and transparency. Living in this manner can only come when will and life has been turned over to the care of God. In other words, when conviction leads to confession and repentance, then and only then is the individual empowered to live in this new dimension of honesty.
King David wrote about such a lifestyle (being honest) in Psalm 51. We read in Verse 6: Behold, You (God) desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
This connection between me and God is linked by His Holy Spirit living and at work in me. His desire is for me to know the deep-down-inside-pass-my-brain kind of truth. I asked a group one time, "What is the greatest truth we can know and understand, outside of who God is?" I got several different answers ranging from "knowing His will for our lives"....to "Understanding the book of Revelation". To me the greatest truth we can know born in the deep place inside of us, is who we truly are in God's eyes. In other words, letting God show us how He sees us, and what we need to surrender to Him. This is where real, honest change begins to form.
Think on this today...
God on you...
mbb
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